Wacom on Ubuntu - How to make button associations persistent ?

Question

Using Wacom Bamboo tablet with Ubuntu there are no default button associations, i.e none of the buttons do anything.
Using 'xsetwacom' will fix this problem, But only temporarily in that these corrections do not persist after reboot.
This wiki page claims to have a method for making these editions persistent, but when I did it x11 wouldn't work and I had to delete both the .conf file and the xorg.conf.d directory (even if empty) via the recovery mode command line.

Does anyone have an explanation for this? Also I am just running a start-up script now, so no need to suggest that.

Answer 1

ETA 3: The fix in ETA 2 is only partially persistent; every now and then it wouldn't kick in properly and I'd have to manually trigger the command in the terminal. Not sure if that's due to order of execution or something else.

ETA 2: Welp, configuration files haven't been any help, so I've resorted to the hack-ish method of including the xsetwacom commands in Ubuntu's Startup Applications list:

Not my preferred method, but after a few startups and shutdowns it seems to be persistent.

ETA: Turns out the solution below has not, in fact, worked for turning off the touchpad on my Bamboo — I jumped the gun there (tested it with a new session but not a total reboot). The conf file may still work for your problem, but I'd do a full reboot test after changing it to be sure. I'll edit again to add my final solution when/if I discover it.

Unsure how useful this will be three years after the fact, but answering in case someone else bumps into this problem:

In Ubuntu you can set persistent X session settings for Wacom tablets without directly editing the main Xorg conf. Instead, you'll want to make sure you have xserver-xorg-input-wacom installed, then edit /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-wacom.conf (the "50-" might change in the future but as long as it has "wacom" in the filename you're probably good).

You can use man wacom for details on how to use the configuration options. For example, I find the touchpad on my Bamboo irritating (especially when I'm using the pen), so I added the line Option "Touch" "off" to the appropriate InputClass.

Save and your changes should persist upon reboot. If you mess up, it should only affect your tablet while leaving X11 intact.